The Spoilage (book)

The Spoilage was the first of three planned books published by the University of California Press that was based upon field observations made by a group of University of California social scientists who studied the removal, incarceration, and resettlement of Japanese Americans from February 1942 to December of 1945 as part of the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS). The Spoilage focuses on the events that transpired at Tule Lake and examines the "disloyal" incarcerated population as many Issei would return home to Japan and a number of Nisei would renounce ties to America. The Spoilage was to be followed by another book on the "salvage"—those whose status was temporarily improved through dispersal and resettlement—and finally on the "residue," those left in the camps after the opening of the West Coast in the beginning of 1945. However, the last book in the project was never completed. Authors Dorothy Swaine Thomas and Richard Shigeaki Nishimoto were assisted in this project by staff members who included Rosalie A. Hankey , James M. Sakoda , Morton Grodzins , and Frank Miyamoto .